By plundering forests, we are buying ticket to extermination

This image taken on February 28, 2018 at a forest in Wundanyi, Taita-Taveta County, shows the effects of logging. The first responsibility of the Kenya Forest Service must be to provide the appropriate seedlings to the public for planting. PHOTO | LUCY MKANYIKA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • We depend largely on agriculture and tourism for jobs and income.
  • The 1980s tree planting was such an undertaking, with government ministries and schools falling over each other to support it.

When French President Emmanuel Macron argued, rather insensitively, that Africa’s problems are “civilisational”, I think I called him an underage nitwit.

However, after looking at how we manage our natural capital — including allowing folks to rob us blind — I still think that Mr Macron is a nitwit but concede that the fellow might have half a point.

Africa is struggling with properly analysing its problems and consistently applying the solutions.

Most Kenyans are unaware that their country is on the verge of a (partly) man-made environmental disaster; they think that their biggest problem is Raila Odinga or Uhuru Kenyatta.

Many sit for hours on poorly designed roads, pumping into their lungs kilos of toxins from unregulated and poorly maintained jalopies — the equivalent of maybe smoking a pack of cigarettes a day — and they don’t think there is a problem or that they are in a position to do something about it.

HUNGER
DR Congo is a veritable Garden of Eden. It’s got 84,824,000 non-forested arable land that is not used.

It is a water superpower, with more than 11,000 cubic metres of renewable fresh water for every citizen, compared to water-stressed countries such as Kenya, which, at best, have under 1,000 cubic metres per capita.

But even with all this water and land, DRC has the worst hunger problem on the continent.

It is ranked with Chad and Eritrea as nations whose hunger situation is “extremely alarming”.

For various reasons, the Congolese are unable to feed themselves — even though they have land and are not going through a drought. How do you explain that?

Africa is very wealthy.

MINERALS
First, it is big — 30 million square kilometres — and not very densely populated, with 1.2 billion people, less than India, and eight million square kilometres of arable land, only two million square kilometres of which is in use.

Not to mention the stuff below the soil — 131 billion barrels of oil, 17 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, 120 million tonnes of coal....

But Africans are desperately poor, their life expectancy is low, they are ravaged by disease and hunger....

At night, whereas other continents are jewels of light from space, it is a dark hole: 60 per cent of Africans have no access to electricity. How do you explain that?

AGRICULTURE
Kenya is among the driest countries in Africa.

It is largely semi-arid, with patches of forest in the highlands, mountains, the lake region and at the coast.

Yet our economy and way of life are tied closely to the land and the environment.

We depend largely on agriculture and tourism for jobs and income.

Our industry, such as it is, draws energy from rivers, even though we are now tapping geothermal, wind and solar energy.

Even without local intervention, our world is heating up and it is affecting our climate.

Warming of the Indian Ocean is disrupting the March-May rains and it’s helping neither our economy nor our health.

Diseases such as cholera, meningitis, malaria and Rift Valley fever will increasingly become a problem.

CONSERVATION
You would expect that, even without being prompted, we would treat our natural capital with a lot of care.

We would protect the forests, water towers and woodlands, we would preserve water as a way of life and would invest in the productivity of our farms.

Instead, we have been on a binge. We have cleared all our forests and are attempting to cultivate the mountains all the way to the disappearing glaciers.

We exported our ancient hardwoods to the Gulf and are now busy harvesting the exotic fields in a strange arrangement involving millers and God-knows-who-else.

The logging cartels are worse than Al-Shabaab; they are killing the present and the future.

They must be exterminated. We are plundering the future by allowing folks to invade and destroy water catchment areas in exchange for their political support.

MOBILISE
One thing you can give former President Moi credit for was his ability to mobilise the country to do important things — such as to fight soil erosion and to plant trees.

He would align the government, public institutions and the citizenry to carry out huge programmes.

The 1980s tree planting was such an undertaking, with government ministries and schools falling over each other to support it.

Forestry agencies provided seedlings and everyone, including school children, participated in planting them.

Had we sustained that tempo these past 30 years, this would be a different land.

So here is the deal: The folks who are farming forests and water towers must leave.

TREE PLANTING

You don’t even need to replant the forests; if you leave them alone, they will restore themselves.

We need to plant trees as if our lives depended on it – because they do.

The first responsibility of the Kenya Forest Service must be to provide the appropriate seedlings to the public for planting.

All of us need to use water more sparingly, protect it from pollution and invest more in the environment.

If we can’t do this, then Macron is not half-right; he is totally right.